Bidding Groups

Contents:

1. What is a Bidding Group?

2. Setting a CPC Bid with Bidding Groups

3. Setting Named Bidding Groups

4. Creating Bidding Rules

1. What is a Bidding Group?

A bidding group is a feature on the Ad Management tab that allows you to easily assign bid costs or bidding groups to product ads.

Bidding groups are available for channels that work on a CPC (cost per click) model where you can bid for the click. If a channel has set costs per click, you won’t see the bidding group icon in Ad Management.

Bidding groups can be used in two different ways, depending on the bidding system of the channel. With some channels you will be able to set a bid cost directly through AdCurve, but with others you will need to assign a named bidding group that can then be used in the channel's own settings.

2. Setting a CPC Bid with Bidding Groups

If it’s supported by the channel, you can set a cpc bid directly in AdCurve to be added to your product feed.

Select products - Locate products manually, or use a filter (see section 4 of our Ad Management article for information on filters) to select a group of products, click the “Add / Change Bidding Groups” button from the Action Menu.

Set a CPC bid - Click the Bidding Group button, and select a bid cost, or enter it manually.

Once the bid is set and processed you’ll see the bidding group icon in the status column for to the product(s) to indicate that a bidding group has been set, and this change will be updated with the channel the next time your feed is generated.

Hovering your mouse over the bidding group icon will allow you to view the bid that has been set for a product. Pressing the Red X will remove the bid from the product.

3. Setting Named Bidding Groups

Channels such as Google Shopping or Bing Shopping don’t support setting a bid cost for individual products in your feed. What you can do instead is assign products to a named bidding group. You can then set costs for the bidding group through your channel’s account settings.

Select products - Locate products manually, or use a filter to select a group of products, press the “Add / Bidding Group” button from the Action Menu.

Set a Bidding Group - Click the Bidding Group button, and select a bidding group for the product(s) to be assigned to

Once the bidding group is set and processed, the bidding group tag will be added to those products the next time your feed is generated. The tags can then be used in the channel settings like the Google Merchant Centre, to set bid costs.

For more detailed help with using bidding groups in the channel's settings, check the AdCurve support article for that particular channel.

You will also now see the bidding group icon in the status column for to the product to indicate that a bidding group has been set.

4. Creating Bidding Rules

You can also set rules for bidding groups, to apply the same action to any products that meet a set of conditions that you define.

To do this you'll need to set up a filter first. In this case I've used a filter to find any products where the Maximum CPC over the last 60 days is between 20c and 30c.

Once this filter is set up, I've selected the products and set up the bidding group as normal, however now I have a checkbox option to Apply this action to all current and future products that meet the conditions: Max CPC is between €0.20 and €0.30 in the past 60 days.

Once I hit the Map Products button, this will create a permanent rule and any products that meet the conditions will have the €0.25 bidding group applied.

You can view bidding rules under the Rules tab in Ad Management. Clicking on the rule will filter the product selection to show only products that are currently being affected by the rule.

If you need any further support with Bidding Groups, or if something is missing from our article, please don't hesitate to start a chat with us at any time using the Intercom button in the bottom right of your screen.